Princess, More Tears to Cry, page 25
Nadia paused, remembering her conversation with Faria. “Princess, I have met with Faria three times and I feel certain that she is speaking from a place of composed preparation rather than from a state of emotion.”
Nadia looked into the distance, remembering what she had been told by the young victim, before looking into my eyes. “If she is indeed sure of this decision, what do you think might happen to help her achieve such a goal? If I go to her with a plan, perhaps she will reveal more of herself to me.”
“You are so right, Nadia. This is all very fresh for Faria. Perhaps she will want her mother’s comfort in a week’s time. We will not rush her, of course. Please call my daughter Amani, so that you can arrange a private meeting between my daughter and this young woman. My daughter is now involved with all aspects of my work and she has a keen mind. Once Amani meets with Faria, she will speak with me, and then we will devise a workable solution according to Faria’s settled emotions and true wishes.”
Nadia was pleased, as she and Amani had connected nicely, with both young women trusting each other. I so wanted Amani to assume true responsibility and not simply follow my instructions. I felt more than pleased to give up total control of my work so that my daughter felt herself a true participant.
And so I struggled to turn my mind away from the horrors Faria had endured. I did not have long to dwell on this young woman’s problems, because my husband came rushing into our home to tell me about a young Saudi woman, the daughter of one of his employees. The poor girl had been arrested for a very serious crime.
Shada and the Anti-Witchcraft and Sorcery Squads
Although I know that there are many Saudi women in grave situations, each misfortune brought to my attention always seems to be the most urgent. But in the bizarre case of Shada I truly felt that I would be unable to save her from certain execution.
Shada is the daughter of one of Kareem’s faithful employees, who works as a mechanic’s assistant in our family garage, located in our expansive Riyadh estate. Although most of the royal estates in the kingdom are equipped with every facility needed to support a small city, including medical clinics, horse stables, large playgrounds, car repair shops, restaurants, and mosques, Kareem has paid special attention to our car repair facility. He organized the building of the garage after Abdullah reached an age to own and drive his own vehicle. As it happens, the building of our garage facility was not quite finished when our son Abdullah visited a local service shop in Riyadh in order to repair his vehicle. It was then that he became involved in a very unpleasant incident, which I will relate here as a short aside.
Shortly after arriving at the shop, our son was accosted by a very angry mechanic, who was physically assaulting his Saudi boss with a large steel wrench. When Abdullah saw the wrench-wielding mechanic attacking the owner of the shop, he tried to remove the wrench from the man’s hand. But the mechanic was strong and held on to his weapon. In the struggle, the wrench came down on my son’s head. Although Abdullah managed to keep his footing, his head was gashed. At that time several other customers intervened and my son was saved from being more seriously battered. It is clear that the mechanic was very angry and was determined to badly injure his employer or anyone else who got in his way.
We later discovered that there was a reason for the man’s anger. His Saudi employer had refused to pay his salary for over a year, and the man’s wife and children were suffering in their home country, as they did not have money to buy the necessities of life. Added to that misery, the Saudi boss refused to allow any of his employees to leave their jobs and return to their home countries until they had worked for the full two years of their contracts.
It is a sad fact that in Saudi Arabia there are a number of very wealthy Saudis who grow wealthier still by hiring poor people from countries all over the world, requiring them to leave their homes and travel to the kingdom to work and earn money to support their families. The Saudi employers do not have to pay any expenses, as the poor people borrow money to pay the agents in their countries to find foreign employment. Generally, they must pay their travel expenditures to the kingdom, too. Once those people are in the country, their passports are seized by their Saudi employers. From that moment, the foreign employees are at the mercy of unscrupulous employers, who have no intention of paying their salaries. While the employers will provide the most basic shelter and enough food to feed their workers, many do not pay the monthly salaries as agreed in the contract. Once in the kingdom, an employer might claim that he is holding their salaries until the end of their contracts; meanwhile, those workers have no funds to send home to their families.
It is a shameful scandal that such wrongful things are common in my country. I even know members of the royal family who act thus with their workers, and these are people with more money than a bank full of employees can count. I do not know what to say, other than that it is wicked and unethical. How I wish there would be laws to protect such hardworking people, but in my country the poor do not have a voice. That is why the soft-hearted royals so often become the voice for the indigent and the helpless.
Of course that foreign mechanic’s anger gained nothing good for him; indeed, it won him a long prison sentence. Only Allah knows what would have happened to that man’s family but for my son’s charitable action. Once Abdullah heard the particulars of the case and learned that the Saudi shop owner had abused his staff and kept back their salaries, he was displeased with that man and felt sympathy for his employees. My son hired a Saudi lawyer to gain permission to question the man sent to prison. Once the man’s trust was won and information was forthcoming as to his family’s contact information, Abdullah arranged for the family to receive twice the man’s salary for the duration of his prison sentence.
Now the wrathful expatriate who once hated all Saudis, and even tried to harm Abdullah, has come to respect and love my son, a Saudi man.
Allah blessed my son with a good heart, and Abdullah has never been able to bear the exploitation of any human, and certainly not when the abuse is so injurious that a person is driven crazy and wants to fight, even knowing that his act will gain him imprisonment or even a death sentence. Such a thing is the behavior of one who is hopeless and has nowhere to turn.
Thankfully, Abdullah was not seriously harmed in that attack, but Kareem nearly lost his mind thinking about what might have happened. Kareem’s voice was loud and high-pitched when he told me the story, saying, “Our son could have been killed, Sultana. It is a serious matter to be hit in the head with a wrench.”
We now have our own garage and highly trained workers from Germany and the United States, who are paid well and who are very happy with this Saudi family. There are five or six Saudi men who assist these skilled mechanics.
And so now I will return to the bizarre story of poor Shada, who is the daughter of one of Kareem’s Saudi mechanic assistants. Although I did not know her personally prior to the incident that threatened her life, I had seen her a few times from a distance and was told that she was a very shy girl. Since she was just a schoolgirl and did not work for our family, I had no occasion to enter into a conversation with her. I had heard more about her father, as my husband praised the man for his attention to detail and his quiet manner.
However, this all changed when Kareem came bursting through the door that day, telling me that there was an acute emergency that had to be dealt with—and one that involved Shada.
To get my mind off Faria’s troubles, I had been reading an interesting report about the current happenings in India, where some men appeared to have lost their minds and believed that any woman walking down the street was available to be raped. Kareem’s anxious face got my attention, however, so I sat up and listened carefully to what he had to say, laying the papers on my desk for later reading.
“What has happened?” I asked.
Kareem was nearly incoherent, but finally he told me that the daughter of one of his favorite employees was in jail, that the religious clerics were saying her crime meant that she would lose her head. Shada had been accused of being a witch.
This was very alarming, but before I recount the story Kareem told me, I feel it is important to give a little background into Shada’s home life and also to explain some very disturbing developments relating to witchcraft and sorcery that increasingly dominate certain parts of Saudi society.
Shada’s mother stays at home with the family. As the mother of five children, she stays busy from the moment the sun rises until she sleeps at night. Shada’s father seemed occupied with work and he was saving all he could because Kareem said he was fond of saying that the years were running at him and soon he would be an old man.
Those who work for us have neat accommodations on our property and have no expenses for utilities or transportation. Kareem supplies the basics of food, such as rice, potatoes, beans, tea, coffee, and chickens. Several times a year the employees are given sheep and camels for feasts. There is a nice large plot where they can grow vegetables in order to supplement their diets. All can choose from the clothing we provide for our employees, but if they want something special, they do spend their own funds for those extras. We have first-aid facilities at our clinic, and unless there is a major health problem all their health needs are met on the palace grounds. Two years ago Kareem had a dental clinic built and it recently opened, so now we have two dentists on staff.
With nearly all the necessities supplied, Shada’s father saved most of his salary so that one day he could retire. His dream was to return to the village of his birth and build a modest home, with ample funds to support his essentials for old age.
The family felt it was the best luck to live and work for a prince for the time being. And they were doubly delighted to work for a prince who had never once cheated them out of their hard-earned money. They know that many poor citizens who work for the royals are not so fortunate.
The bizarre incident that led to Shada’s arrest happened when she visited one of the newest malls in Riyadh, a mall that is teeming with people from every walk of life, from the most affluent Saudis to the poorest expatriate workers from various developing countries. These people from different socioeconomic classes brush near to each other while promenading past exclusive shop windows displaying the most costly clothes and jewelry, although they rarely have occasion to mingle or to enter into discussion with one another.
Shada had never been in any mall—she is not a girl who has money to go shopping, so there was no reason for her to take a stroll into a world of dreams. Apparently, on this occasion, Shada’s parents had allowed her to go to the mall with another family they knew. As I have said, this was her first visit to the mall, and it was her naivety that led to the crisis.
I have been told that Shada was so taken in by the sights she saw that she could not stop staring at everyone and everything. This is a bad habit in Saudi Arabia, where people guard their privacy with great resolve and most particularly the privacy of females.
When Shada entered a lingerie shop and saw what she said was the most beautiful woman in the world—a young Saudi woman who had slipped out of her veil while in the privacy of the shop—Shada walked close to the woman and gawked open-mouthed at the woman’s face. She also ogled her cloak and went so far as to bend down to examine the woman’s expensive designer heels.
The Saudi woman became very offended, even distraught, and, covering herself quickly, ran from the shop to locate her parents, who were having a coffee nearby. Her alarmed father summoned the police, and when Shada walked out of the lingerie shop she was surrounded and arrested. At first, the police said that Shada was stalking the young woman and that she was going to be charged as a harasser, which is a serious crime in my country.
Unfortunately, by this time the Saudi beauty claimed to have fallen ill and vomited on the floor. At this point Shada, who was unsophisticated to the point of near stupidity, fell to the floor and tried to clean up the mess with a handkerchief she had in her hand, which had some embroidery stitches on it. Shada actually reached out to touch the beauty, trying to tell her that she was sorry but that she was so beautiful she could not take her eyes from her face, that she did not know that such beauty existed.
The beauty’s mother then became hysterical and shouted to the police that Shada was holding a handkerchief with a chant embroidered on it, saying Shada was in reality a witch who was trying to gather her daughter’s vomit so as to create a spell. The mother claimed that all women were jealous of her daughter’s beauty and obviously this witch was planning to murder her daughter using a chant or a spell.
I really did not know what to say. For the past few years, I had learned much about this new and scary trend in Saudi Arabia, but this was the first occasion when someone working for our family had been trapped in the lunacy.
“Well, where is Shada now?” I asked Kareem.
“In prison. By the time her father was notified, she had already been arrested and charged.”
“What is the charge?”
Kareem nearly shouted, “Witchcraft! The foolish girl is being charged as a witch!”
“What can we do?”
“I do not know, Sultana. This is a touchy subject.”
“Yes.”
Kareem slumped into a chair. I had not seen my husband so disturbed in a long time. He gazed at me with pain in his eyes.
“Shada’s parents are inconsolable. Most troubling, they believe that I can make a telephone call and all will be well. I really do not know what I can do.”
I glanced at the clock. “You can do nothing, tonight, husband. It is late.”
Kareem sighed noisily. “I hate what is happening in our country. There is a madness that is surrounding us. I do not know what it will take to stop this slide into total lunacy. Witches and witchcraft! These wild men are casting a shadow over our country, and us!”
Although most believe that the royal family can make such problems go away with a snap of our fingers, this is not true. The religious authorities are so powerful in Saudi Arabia that even our king handles them delicately. Although he is more influential than they are, he still must choose his battles with care. Neither Kareem nor I could win such a confrontation with the men of religion, not even to save Shada’s life.
Kareem instructed one of his managers to stay the night at Shada’s home, so as to comfort her parents. He left word that he would do what he could the following morning.
Our sleep was fitful, and when morning came we were not rested.
When Kareem left our home, he was a man with a purpose. He was going to gather several of his most influential cousins to ask their advice. As it turned out, his cousins did not want to be associated with the case, as they too were aware that anything to do with witches and sorcery is a very offensive matter in Saudi Arabia, unless one is going to join in the madness and deliver new victims for the religious authorities to torture. In such a case, the men of religion would be solicitous and friendly.
Soon Kareem found it necessary to hire one of the most respected lawyers in our country to plead Shada’s case—a man whose own safety was not assured, even with the backing of the royal family. He grew increasingly fearful for his own safety—the men of religion glared at him in the courtroom and the judge threatened him with a long prison sentence for representing a witch! It is horrendous for all Saudis that often lawyers representing victims are put into prison to join their clients.
A dreadful nightmare was upon us. Everything in our country moves unhurriedly—and nothing more so than the legal system. Kareem and I found ourselves trapped in a sludge of apprehension and torment. We were told by the attorney my husband had hired that Shada had been found guilty and was going to be executed by beheading.
Few people from the West are aware that most Muslims are very superstitious and believe in magicians, black magic, the evil eye, and jinns, which are supernatural beings that try to frighten, or even harm, good Muslims.
From the time I was a child, even I was warned about the evil eye and about supernatural beings, although my father would grow annoyed if anyone mentioned jinns in his presence. Even though he was not highly educated, he was intelligent, and he claimed that jinns existed only in the mind, not in the physical life.
I knew no real details about witchcraft and sorcery until I was married and discovered that my mother-in-law was an avid believer in the power of black magic. She, like many Saudi royal women who have too much time on their hands, obtains elation through the supernatural. My mother-in-law even influenced Maha, who went through a period of practicing black magic, but Kareem and I so discouraged her that she soon forgot about it.
There are occasions when stories about sorcery and black magic bring smiles, such as the time in the mid-1980s when an American friend who lived in my country shared an amusing story. She was an avid reader and followed the news more closely than most. She was told about a radio announcement in Jeddah regarding a harmful jinn that a Saudi man had identified as lurking in a specific Jeddah community. Many citizens in Jeddah became alarmed over the sighting, and soon those people were spreading gossip about personally catching a glimpse of a particularly vile jinn roaming about in their neighborhood. The paper said that the jinn had been seen by one of their reporters. According to the journalist, the jinn was so physically unsightly that there were no fitting words to describe it. In one of the articles, readers were told that one of the Saudi men in the “jinn obsessed” neighborhood had even obtained a photograph of the hideous jinn. The paper promised to run the photograph, although, for some unexplained reason, they were holding the image for a week. Meanwhile, Jeddah citizens were told to stay in their homes at night and to keep doors locked at all times. Mass hysteria was building as each day the editors ran stories about the various sightings of the jinn, which was becoming increasingly dangerous, or so the newspaper asserted.
All following the story waited with nervous excitement, desperate to see this image of the jinn for themselves.
